by Nora Roberts
A fire burned there, fragrant with peat, in a strange little stove where a copper kettle heated.
Open shelves and cupboards held bright blue dishes, white cups, gleaming glassware, little jars filled with color. On the gleaming wood counters sat more flowers, potted herbs, more jars.
Kitchen tools, skillets, pots, an apron all hung on pegs.
She knew this place, Breen thought. But how could she when she’d never been here?
Because her father had described it to her—that had to be the answer.
“I thought tea,” Marg began, “but you’re a bit pale, and it’s a day, isn’t it, for both of us. Why not wine? Will you sit, mo stór?”
But she stood. “Is my father here?”
“In you, in me, he is always. But not the way you’re meaning. Please sit. I’ve a need to myself.”
Breen sat at the little square of a table, clutched her hands together in her lap. Marg took something out of a jar, then tapped her finger in the air at the dog, who’d hopefully followed them in.
He sat, wiggled in anticipation. Whatever Marg gave him had him prancing off to sprawl in the corner and gnaw on it.
She poured a clear amber liquid out of a jug into stemless glasses, then set them on a painted tray with a plate of cookies.
“Shortbread biscuits. They were one of your favorites as a child.”
And still were, Breen thought.
“How do you know that?” she demanded as Marg set the glasses, the plate on the table. “I’ve never met you before.”
Marg took the tray back to the counter, sat. “My girl, I helped bring you into this world. It was my hands that drew you from your mother’s womb. Yelling, you were, your little fists shaking and ready to fight, and a down of red hair on your head, already curling.”
“You came to Philadelphia?”
“No, you were born here, just down the road at the farm.”
“No, that’s not right. I was born in Philadelphia. My mother said . . .” Had she? Breen wondered. Or had she herself simply assumed? “I thought—no, my birth certificate says I was born in Philadelphia.”
“Such things are easy enough to fix as you please, aren’t they now? Why would I lie to you about such a thing?”
“I don’t know. Where’s my father? Does he live nearby?”
Marg picked up her wine, sipped slowly. Then she set the glass down, met Breen’s eyes. And because she saw grief, Breen knew before the words were spoken.
“No. No, he’s not—”
“Do you think he wouldn’t come back to you if he could? That he would leave you? You, the light and heart of his life? He loved you beyond measure, and you know that for truth. Your own heart knows.”
“When?” Breen choked it out, then covered her face with her hand. “When?”
“You won’t want the comfort of my arms now, for you only remember tiny bits as yet. One day, I hope we can comfort each other. He was my boy, my life, my only child.”
Through a veil of tears, Breen saw sorrow, saw the depth of it.
“He came back, as it was his duty, as he was needed. He died a hero, understand that, fourteen years ago this past winter. Everyone in all the worlds owes him that honor and that debt.”
“I don’t understand. He wasn’t a soldier.”
“Oh, sure and he was much more than that.” Pride joined grief. “If he could’ve had his own wish, he’d have been but a father, a husband, a son, a farmer, but he was called, and answered.”
“Does my mother know?”
“I can’t tell you.” Marg picked up her wine again. “I would say she does, deep inside her, but it would be easier, wouldn’t it, to believe he’d just left. She loved him,” Marg said quickly. “Know that as well. When they met and made vows, made you, there was love between them, and deep, true.”
Sense memory, Marco called it. Because she knew this place, the farm, the air. She knew it in her heart.
“If I was born here, when did they leave? Why did they leave?”
“There’s a story here for another time, but I can say she was unhappy here, your mother, and grew . . . anxious for her own world. She wanted you in that world. And my Eian chose, as a man should, his wife and child.”
“But he came back here?”
“Often, as often as he could.” Taking a moment, Marg looked down at her wine, then lifted her gaze—eyes of misty blue. “I pined for you, I’ll humble myself and say it. But he never brought you back, as your mother wanted you where you were. He hoped when you were older, and he could explain more to you, you’d come with him. But that wasn’t to be.”
“Why was she—and still is, really—so dead set against me visiting Ireland?
Marg glanced at Breen’s untouched glass. “Would you rather tea after all?”
“No . . .” She picked up the glass, sipped. “It’s good—it’s so . . . fresh.”
“My own making.” Marg smiled, and Breen felt that the light went bright with it. “Dandelion wine it is. It’s summer in a glass, I think.”
“Yes. You never wrote or called or . . . He told me about you, about here. I just can’t remember clearly.”
“You will, in time.”
A glass of wine at a kitchen table didn’t bridge the gap of a lifetime.
“Why didn’t you keep in touch with me? Why didn’t you tell me when he died?”
“It was agreed it was best you forgot your time here, those first three years.”
“Three years? I lived here until I was three?”
“Such a bright and happy child you were. Your mother . . . you mustn’t blame her too harshly. I’ve wanted to myself, I’ll admit it, but she was out of place here, and she feared for you. You were so gifted. And then, you were taken.”
“Taken where? You mean . . . I was kidnapped?”
“Taken, yes, and she was terrified. We all were. We got you back, safe, unhurt, but your mother, it was too much for her.”
Born on a farm in Ireland, kidnapped at three? How could that be part of her life?
“They never told me! It’s not right they never told me, not any of this.”
“She needed to close it off, to close it all off.”
“You sent me money,” Breen murmured. “My father, then you after . . . after he died.”
“He did, and when he was gone, I did. It was all I could do for you until now, when you’ve chosen to come. If you chose to stay as you were, well, the money could soften your life. Your father put money away for you, and I sent it along as well after he died.”
“She didn’t tell me. She kept that from me, too.”
“I know.”
“How do you know?” Breen demanded. “Have you talked with her?”
“I haven’t, no, as she wouldn’t want to talk with me. There are ways to know and see.”
“You’re my grandmother—the only grandparent I have. She was estranged from her parents, and then they died years ago. Unless . . . Do I have a grandfather?”
“Another time for that.”
Breen pushed up, wine in hand. “None of this makes sense, not really. I lived here, according to you, for the first three years of my life, but I don’t remember.”
“Don’t you?” Marg said softly.
Sun streaming through lace curtains, the smell of baking. Music and laughter in that farmhouse.
And her father’s hands guiding hers on the strings of a harp.
“I get blurry pictures sometimes, but they’re mixed in with the stories Da used to tell me. And he’s dead, and all this time, no one told me. I waited for him. I came looking for him. I was so angry with him.”
Tears flowed now as much in anger as grief as she paced around the kitchen. “I have a grandmother who sent money—a hell of a lot of money—but never called, never wrote—and I’m a grown woman, so that’s a bullshit excuse about what my mother wanted. You never said here I am, come visit me, or I’ll come to you.”
“It wasn’t time.”
�
�Time?” She whirled back. “It wasn’t time for twenty-odd years, now suddenly it is?”
“Aye, now it is. You were unhappy, blocked from so much that you are. I kept my word to your mother, and now I’m keeping my word to my boy. For his last thoughts were of you. And dying, my boy . . .”
Grief poured into the air, so Breen sat again and pushed down her own anger. “I’m sorry. This is hard for you.”
“I wanted a bevy of babies, and had only the one. Oh, but such a one. A comet he was. And as the flame of him was going out, his heart asked of mine to give your mother more time. He loved her, Breen, and never stopped. But his love for you was beyond even that. He asked of me to watch and wait, and if I saw you had a need to come through, even more than if you were needed—and you are—that I would see to it. So I have.”
“How did you see to it? I didn’t know about the money, and it was just, well, luck, that I found out. Then got pissed off enough to do something I wanted. I came to Ireland because I wanted to see and feel and know that part of my heritage. I wanted to see where my father grew up, and I hoped to find him. I didn’t even know you existed when I decided to come to Ireland.”
“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it? You’re not in Ireland now.”
“Maybe you’ve had too much wine,” Breen said carefully. “Because I’m sitting right here. I’ve been staying in a cottage maybe a mile away, in Galway, for two weeks.”
“Aye, well, the cottage is in Ireland, that’s true. But you came through.”
“What? The looking glass?”
“And a fine story that is,” her grandmother said easily. “We’re fond of stories here. You wanted a dog.” Marg looked back at the pup, who’d curled up for a nap. “I sent you a dog. Your father left his two with me when he left—and oh, you cried so hard for them. For me as well, but wept, inconsolable, for the dogs. They’ve passed now, gone onto the next, but they had good long lives first.”
“Will . . . Will and Lute.”
“So you remember,” Marg said with a smile. “Eian named Will for the bard, and Lute as she liked to howl and did so musically.”
“I . . .” She did remember. Both big, gray, shaggy. Wolfhounds, Irish wolfhounds. “Sometimes I’d ride on Will’s back, like a pony. I shouldn’t be able to remember that. I couldn’t have been a year old.”
“The heart remembers.”
Because something in her started to jitter, Breen looked back at the sleeping pup. Safer territory. “So he is your dog? What’s his name?”
“He’s yours—a gift.”
“I can’t take him. I’m going back to Philadelphia at the end of the summer. And I have an apartment. I’m going to look for a house, but . . .”
“That’s not a worry if you want him. You’ve wanted a dog. You’ve always had an affinity for animals and . . . living things. I wanted to give you something your heart wanted, and so there he is.”
Not safer territory after all.
“Is it safe you’re wanting?” Marg demanded. “Is it really what you’re wanting when you wear the word for courage over the beat of your own heart?” She tapped a finger on Breen’s tattoo. “Be brave, girl, and listen. You’re blood of my blood, and I gave up the joy of you for reasons you’ll learn as time goes. But the time for that is done, and the choices now will be in your hands.”
“What choices?”
“So many, and some already made, as they brought you here. You came to the Welcoming Tree and went forward, not back, and so passed through the portal with Ireland and America and all the rest of that world on one side, and this world—your homeplace, Talamh—on the other.”
Breen nudged her wine aside. “This area’s called Tala? I haven’t heard of it.”
With some impatience Marg spelled it out. “Though you pronounce it well enough. It’s a world, as real and solid as any other. But we are not of the others, nor they of us. Some worlds are very old, some very young. Some embrace violence, others embrace peace. Some, as the world you were reared in most of your life, wish for machines and technology to both build and destroy. But here, we have chosen to abjure such things and hold on to the magicks, their powers and their beauties.”
Breen didn’t doubt this woman was her grandmother. The resemblance was too strong, and the grief when Marg had spoken of her son unquestionably real.
But that didn’t mean her grandmother wasn’t a little bit crazy.
“You’re actually talking about, what, a multiverse? That’s comic-book stuff.”
Marg slapped a hand on the table, made Breen jump. “Why are so many so arrogant they don’t just believe they’re all there is, but insist upon it?”
“Because science?”
“Bah. Science changes generation by generation—and more. Once in the realm of Earth the science said the world was flat—until they said it wasn’t. Science changes, mo stór. Magick is constant.”
“Science doesn’t change so much as it finds new data and information to adjust its findings. I mean, gravity was gravity, right, long before the metaphorical apple fell on Newton’s head. But . . . I understand things are different here, and I understand—to a point—why you didn’t feel able to keep in contact with me. I’m grateful, so grateful, for the money you sent that helped me come here. I’m staying through the summer, and I’ll come back and visit you. I . . . I’d like if you could take me—or show me—where my father’s buried.”
“You’ve gone there in dreams. You saw me as I saw you in the place where the Pious once walked. You heard the song of the stones and the murmur of prayers still spoken.”
Panic dropped on her chest. “You can’t know what I dream. I need to go.”
Marg got to her feet, pinned Breen with a look.
“I am Mairghread O’Ceallaigh, once taoiseach of Talamh. I am of the Fey, a servant of the gods. I am Maiden, Mother, Crone. You come from me, child of my child, and in your blood lives all the gifts given.”
The air changed. It . . . stirred. It rippled through Marg’s hair, sent it swirling. Her eyes went dark and deep as she lifted her hands, palms up.
Dishes rattled on the shelves. The sleeping dog woke, sat up before he let out a howl that sounded like joy.
“Break the chains on the restrictions locked around you in the other. Listen and feel and see truth.”
She swept out a hand, and the fire in the odd little stove roared as candles leaped to flame. “And here air whip, fire burn, here earth tremble, and water spill.”
Now in her hand a fountain of water spurted up, shimmered in the light.
“All these elemental, all these linked to the magicks that form a world. Our world, and yours. You have come home, daughter of Talamh, daughter of the Fey. You will know your birthright. And you will choose.”
With a flick of her hand, the fountain of water vanished. Candles guttered out, and the air and all went still.
“You . . . put something in the wine.”
With a roll of her eyes, Marg picked up her glass, drank deep. “Don’t be foolish. You’ve lived with lies and deceptions too long. I’ll give you neither. You are loved, Breen. Whatever your choices to come may be, you will always be loved. But you can’t make true choices until you awaken.”
Marg walked to her, put a hand on her cheek. “You need time yet. I’ll walk with you some of the way, and the dog will guide you back to the cottage. When you’re ready, I’ll do as you ask and take you to the place we laid the one we love.”
“I can find my way back. I can’t take the dog. I don’t even have the supplies to feed him and—”
“All you need for him is there. He’ll be a companion for you, for now, we’ll say. Do me this small favor and let him be with you for a day or two.”
“Okay, fine. I really have to go. It’s a long walk back.”
“It is a journey, one I hope you’ll make again.”
“I’ll visit you.” She owed the woman that much. But before she did, she’d read up on delusions and hypnosis.
“I see you have other guides waiting.”
The falconer, Breen saw, with the glorious bird on her gloved arm. With a happy bark, the dog raced to them.
“I met her. I met her in Clare.”
“Oh, long before that. You and Morena were friends as babies, as close as her grandmother and I have been all our lives.”
“Was she in Clare to watch me?”
“Ah, child, so wary you are. She was there because she’s headstrong and saw the chance to see you again. I’ll leave Breen with you and Amish then,” Marg called out. “You’ll take her back safe, won’t you, and not badger at her?”
“We’ll see her back safe. I can’t promise it all.”
“Well, I suppose that has to do.” Turning, Marg laid her hands on Breen’s shoulders, kissed both her cheeks lightly. “Open yourself, mo stór, and see what’s around you, and inside you.”
She stepped back, and into the cottage.
And in the quiet alone, wept for what might have been, and what might be.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Because badgering was exactly what Breen had in mind, she walked down to Morena.
“Why did you tell me you worked for the falconry school?”
“But I didn’t, did I?” Cocking a hip, Morena put her free hand on it. The gesture reeked of sarcasm. “You assumed that. You didn’t remember me, and that cut a bit even though Marg and my grandmother both said you wouldn’t. Not right off.”
She lifted her arm so the hawk winged up. As she started walking, she turned. “Are you after staying or going?”
“I’m going.”
“You promised you’d come back when you went away, but I stopped believing it, as you never tried.”
“I’m not going to take flak for that. How am I suddenly in the wrong when I’m the only one I can see who didn’t lie? And I was three, according to my grandmother, when I left Ireland for Philadelphia.”
“You left Talamh.”
“Oh God, not you, too!” Out of patience, Breen threw her hands in the air, turned a circle. “Is it something in the local water?”